South Africa’s rugby bosses on Friday formally adopted a transformation charter designed to significantly increase the number of black people involved in the sport. South African Rugby Union (Saru) president Oregan Hoskins told a media briefing in Cape Town that Saru’s president’s council had given its blessing to the ”scientifically based” seven page document.
Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon on Friday questioned the wisdom of Lulu Xingwana’s appointment as Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister. ”As Deputy Minister of Minerals and Energy, Xingwana achieved little aside from her racist and xenophobic diatribes in Parliament, which were viewed with alarm by both local and foreign investors,” Leon said in his weekly newsletter.
A parliamentary committee has approved draft legislative changes that boost the legislature’s role, and lessens that of the executive, in the appointment of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) council. The amendments will now be tabled in Parliament for consideration.
South Africa will be playing a leading part in building an affordable broadband network for the continent, Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has told parliamentarians. She said the initiative to build the network involves in the initial stages 22 countries in Southern and East Africa.
Eskom’s ”power alert” messages will be broadcast on South African Broadcasting Corporation television from Thursday night, the electricity utility said in a statement. Meanwhile, the situation at Koeberg nuclear power station will ”return to normal” by August, Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks said on Thursday.
Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille has come out firing against the Democratic Alliance over what she describes as its "hypocrisy", by entering into coalitions with its arch-rival African National Congress in towns "all over the Western Cape". De Lille has been sparring with the DA after it accused her of lying.
Recent global events, including high costs of imported oil, have necessitated a review of South Africa’s planned liberalisation of the petroleum sector, outgoing Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks said on Thursday. The minister said that the impact of the increases could result in the slowing down of global economic growth.
Cellphone operator Vodacom criticised draft interception legislation on Thursday for placing an onerous and expensive burden on the industry and clients. ”This proposed Act needs more careful thought in terms of its unintended consequences before becoming law,” Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig said in a statement.
South Africa faces a massive task in reaching the Millennium Development Goals for child survival in 2015, with trends showing that the mortality rates of infants and children under the age of five were increasing rather than decreasing. ”Currently, the prospect of having to reduce the child-death figures … by two-thirds by 2015 seems dismal,” a two-day conference heard.
The horror stories have become platitudes — a nine-month-old baby allegedly gang-raped, a pensioner raped by her grandson — to make the interminable list lend weight to perceptions of South Africa as a world rape capital. In the Western Cape, police statistics show that rape was the only contact-crime category to increase, by 8,2%, from 2003/04 to 2004/05.
The Cape Town Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday authorised a warrant for the arrest of British tourist Anthony Cooper, who allegedly started a massive fire on Table Mountain during last-year’s festive season. He is also charged with drunken driving and failed to appear in court on that charge on Tuesday.
Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has taken a cautious stance on what he termed growing imbalances in world markets, noting that South Africa’s rand currency saw "a lot of movement" in one day on Monday. He was addressing the National Assembly finance portfolio committee during the National Treasury budget vote briefing.
Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana has called on trade unions representing striking security guards and employers to resume negotiations, the government news agency, BuaNews, reported on Tuesday. Mdladlana said he had been asked to intervene in the impasse over wages and working conditions in the security industry. But, he said, according to the law he could not do so.
A former boss of one of the travel agencies implicated in the parliamentary travel voucher scam spent an hour-and-a-half behind bars on Monday for his lack of co-operation in a liquidation inquiry. David Phokeng, an ex-director of the now-liquidated Bathong Travel, was detained in the holding cells of the Bellville Magistrate’s Court at the request of the attorney acting for the liquidators, Bernhard Kurz.
Cape mayor Helen Zille spent part of Monday afternoon briefing Capetonians on how to seek redress from the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union for damage inflicted during a violent march last week. Her spokesperson, Robert Macdonald, said about 150 to 200 people attended the meeting at the Civic Centre.
Biodiversity policies must be integrated into economic decision-making for South Africa’s flora and wildlife to be conserved, says Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk. He was speaking at the launch of the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan in Port Elizabeth on Monday..
Official opposition Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon took to the streets of Mitchells Plain on Monday, where his party is fighting a key by-election against Patricia de Lille’s Independent Democrats in the coloured working-class district of Tafelsig. He argued that voters were being given a chance to vote against De Lille’s flirtation with the African National Congress ”reign of ruin”.
A director of the liquidated Bathong travel agency, David Phokeng, was arrested on Monday in a bid to make him co-operate with the liquidation inquiry. Bellville magistrate Mannie van Reenen ordered the arrest after the attorney acting for the liquidators, Bernhard Kurz, complained that Phokeng regarded the hearings as a joke.
The world needs a new breed of prosecutor and investigator to deal with the challenges of transnational organised crime, the special adviser to National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli said on Friday. Kalyani Pillay was speaking in Cape Town at a PricewaterhouseCoopers conference on economic crime in Africa.
South Africa’s indigenous people who are yearning for land are "running out of patience" and the return of the land to those dispossessed should be accelerated, an African National Congress select committee chairperson said in the policy debate on agriculture and land affairs on Friday.
Upholding the city of Cape Town’s decision to revoke a contract extension for city manager Wallace Mgoqi, the Cape High Court on Friday agreed that former mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo had had no power to do so. Mfeketo’s decision ”was fatally flawed and hence unlawful and invalid”, said Judge Deon van Zyl.
Government is considering placing an upper limit on student tuition fees in the public higher education system, Education Minister Naledi Pandor said on Friday. Widening access to higher education has led to pressing cost challenges, she told MPs in the National Assembly during debate on her budget vote.
South African President Thabo Mbeki has opened the door to a review of floor-crossing legislation — which allows MPs, members of the provincial legislatures and local government councillors to defect from their political parties — but said the matter was ”eminently political” and should be dealt with by MPs and not the executive.
More animals were killed by poachers in the Kruger National Park (KNP) last year than the year before, but the park says the numbers have ”decreased significantly” in recent months. ”Up to 20 white rhino were poached last year; the figure is now back down to seven or eight,” KNP media officer Raymond Travers said.
Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane (65), leader of about four million Anglicans in Southern Africa, has given notice that he intends to step down from the ”extremely demanding” post in 2008. ”What I believe our church needs now is an injection of youthful energy and enthusiasm,” he said in a statement issued on Thursday.
Two buses were set on fire by a mob and about eight others damaged by stone throwing in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha before dawn on Thursday as the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ national strike got under way. Golden Arrow Bus Services spokesperson Vuyisile Mdoda said the incidents were reported to the company at 6am.
Cabinet has urged striking security guards and their employers to resolve their differences and end violent protests. Briefing the media after Cabinet’s meeting at Parliament on Wednesday, government communications head Joel Netshitenzhe said Cabinet once more condemned in the strongest terms the acts of violence by some demonstrators.
South Africa’s Cabinet made the claim on Wednesday to have the largest number of people on anti-retroviral treatment for HIV/Aids in the world. Government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said the government would be ”scaling up its communication and social mobilisation” on the Aids fight.
Cabinet has backed Minister of Intelligence Ronnie Kasrils over allegations by the African National Congress Youth League that he may have had an underhanded role in the rape trial against former deputy president Jacob Zuma. The Cabinet issued the statement on Wednesday saying it rejected "insinuations" that any member of the executive or employee of the state may have been involved in illegal "underhand activities … leading up to the trial".
The City of Cape Town has withdrawn permission for the Congress of South African Trade Unions to march there during a national strike on Thursday. Mayoral spokesperson Robert MacDonald said the decision came after Tuesday’s violent march in the city.
A visit by South African President Thabo Mbeki to Palestine is being discussed with that nation’s president as well as the new Hamas government, but any visit will be judged against its contribution to peace in the area, said South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, on Wednesday.
The chairperson of the South African Trade and Allied Workers’ Union (Satawu) in the Western Cape has apologised for the violent rampage through Cape Town by striking guards on Tuesday. Jerome Fortune said Satawu members would probably lay charges of assault against police.